West Papua Information Kit

Introduction

Papua also known as New Guinea is the world's second largest island and is on the northern edge of the Australian continental plate where it is being pushed upwards as the plate slowly moves north. Papua and the Australian continent were colonised by Melanesian ancestors over fifty thousand years ago, later Asian and European incursions and settlements failed until people in West Papua permitted a Dutch presence to be established in the mid 19th century.

In Europe an agreement was reached by 1895 alleging that West Papua was a Dutch territory, that the north east territory was German, and the south east was British. During the First World War the Australian government seized the German claim and Australia became the administrator of eastern Papua having already been given administration of the Brtish claim by the British in 1905. West Papua was successfully invaded by Japan in 1942 until liberated with American help in 1944 after which the Dutch administration returned until a second American intervention compelled the Dutch to sign an agreement asking the United Nations in 1962 to occupy and administrate West Papua.

Plight of the nation of West Papua

Since becoming subject to UN and Indonesian administration, there has been massive resource exploitation such as by the American mining company Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, vast deforestation projects to produce palm oil for Korean companies and to provide China and other nations with Papua's merbau wood, to profit BP and corporations with Papua's limited LNG resources, and by hundreds of other businesses that are owned by Indonesian military (TNI) officers.

In the months before gaining control, Indonesia pressed the Australian government to deport West Papuan students for unspoken purpose, and on taking control imposed Martial law conditions with mobile police patrolling the streets with automatic weapons. In September, Indonesia declared the territory was being quarantined and access would be restricted to government approved visitors, and two years later began admitting that it has been killing indigenous citizens of the territory and their leaders.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed during the past fifty years of Indonesian administration, and there is widespread belief that Jakarta and it business friends have been conducting campaigns of murder, theft, and oppression. Massacres such as in Biak in 1970 and 1998, and Geselema in 1996 have been an on-going and tragic theme. And each month there are more non-judicial killings, political arrests, and other oppressions of West Papuan human rights.

The systematic Indonesian murder and oppression of the West Papuan people was studied and found to constitute genocide in the Yale Law School paper "Indonesian Human Rights Abuses in West Papua: Application of the Law of Genocide to the History of Indonesian Control" published in 2004. A subsequent Sydney University paper "Genocide in West Papua? - University of Sydney" also considered whether the Indonesian transmigration program, the spread of HIV/AIDS, and other factors are contributing to a program of genocide.

The legal situation - United Nations Trusteeship

In August 1962 the newspapers published a Reuters story claiminig that the Netherlands and Indonesia had signed an agreement to trade a colony between themselves. The story is a fiction that has helped mislead the public and governments about the true function of the agreement that the General Assembly was being asked to approve without debate in September 1962.

Under international law the members of the United Nations do not own, and therefore can not trade colonies or non-self-governing territories. Under the Charter of the United Nations, non-self-governing territories such as West New Guinea (West Papua) are the beneficaries of a trust; a trusteeship described in either

• Chapter XI or in
• Chapters XII and XIII of the Charter.

In December 1950 the Netherlands said it was subject to the obligations of UN Charter Chapter XII, article 73 (a "sacred trust") for the welfare of the people of West Papua (until they achieved a "full measure of self-government"), which the other nations agreed was true in UN General Assembly resolution 448.

On 21st September 1962 in UN General Assembly in resolution 1752 our nations decided to occupy West Papua with our choice of UN troops, our nations approved an agreement asking that United Nations subjugate West New Guinea (West Papua) while alleging that the motive or issue in mind when writing the agreement was the "interests and welfare of the people of the territory of West New Guinea (West Irian)".

Although Indonesian officials had "not gone so far as to be willing to call a trusteeship a trusteeship" ^(ref) the agreement commonly known as the 'New York Agreement' is an agreement as defined in the UN "International Trusteeship System", Chapter XII of the Charter of the United Nations.

• As consequence of statute law, Charter of the United Nations Chapter XII, our nations became & remain the joint trustees for West Papua when our governments allowed the General Assembly majority to approve an agreement as defined in Article 85 part 1 of Chapter XII of the Charter.
• Nothing in the agreement or in any other agreement can limit or end our obligations under the Charter of the United Nations.^{(reference Article 103)}
• Also as a common principle of law & equity, the agreement made our nations the "trustee" for the "interests and welfare of the people" both because the agreement actually says that was the goal when writing the agreement, and because the agreement put our nations & the United Nations in a position of ascendency (overpowering control) over the colony. - It is a moral and legal fact that our governments remain responsible for our action of imposing foreign control over the people of West Papua.

Neither our governments nor Indonesia have authority to decide issues regarding the Charter of the United Nations, that power is in the exclusive juridiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Administration

Within weeks of United Nations approval the the 1962 agreement, United Nations troops from Pakistan had landed. In 1963 the United Nations accepted an Indonesian offer to provide troops and administion of the territory, an administration which for over fifty years has refused requests by the indigenous population to leave.

The last known official United Nations document concerning West Papua is available from the United Nations Archives and Records Management Section and says that "in 1963 Dutch New Guinea became Irian Barat, which in 1973 changed its name to Irian Jaya and is currently administered by Indonesia".

Contents

Special Autonomy	Who	Where	Why
Military Invasion Myths & Fact	White house USA 1961	Chronolgy & nbsp;	Colonization
United Nations Resolution 1514	United Nations Resolution 1541	New York Agreement	Act of No Choice
US Embassy 1960s notes	Section 1115 rejected 2005	Genocide	Other reports
New York Times 1950 - 2005	Sydney Morning Herald	New Zealand papers 1969	other publications
Video reports	Graphics	Whose Who	Contacts
WP Rallies	Political Prisoners	Refugees	HIV/AIDS
TNI Indonesian Military	Denial of Free Speech	Quotes JFK and others	Freeport & Tangguh
US Petition	UN Petition	What to ask my government

West Papua in English refers to the western half of Papua, but in an apparant attempt to both divide the Papuan people and to confuse the outside world with the names, Indonesia in 2007 imposed political divisions it calls the Province of West Papua (Papua Barat), and the Province of Papua.